A Rifle Design Based on Archimedes's Screw

Hey there John, and good early morning (yer west coast right?) Interesting post. I did not know about this particular firearm until now.

Why did this not catch-on? I haven't yet read the attached article, but I suspect the reasons were:

1. The mechanism was complex. Complex mechanisms, even if they're pretty reliable, still need maintenance and the occasional tweak, or repair. For example, right now, in the town in which I live, people who drive Ferraris or even ageing Alpha Romeos need to drive up the road to Portlandia (well, 2 hours up the road, 1 hr 20 if you drive real fast.)

Me? I have vowed to only purchase pre-1994 Mercedes 'cause this was the last year they applied their policy of over-engineering. Plus, more relevant, I can easily work on every part of these cars without borrowing friendly Mercedes mechanics' equipment, ears, or time...you gotta go easy on their good will for when you really neeeed it,

I suspect this gun was a proof-of-concept, perhaps a model to be shopped around to various manufacturers. It is an elegant, attractive piece, but I suspect it went nowhere because other, simpler to reload repeater became available around the same time and caused the novel loading mechanism to be perceived as obsolete.

Now....I will actually read the linked article and see if what I just wrote is a good, bad, or ugly guess....Wah Wah Wah....

I believe one problem was the way it was loaded. Other repeating rifles such as the Winchester could be loaded with any number of cartridges up to their capacity and immediately have a round ready to fire. With the Evans, if you had a 28-shot model but only wanted to load and fire a single round, you would have to put in the round then work the action 28 times to get it into the chamber to fire. While the firepower was impressive, not many people truly needed all those rounds at once, so the pain in short-loading it would have been a detriment to its sales.

By the way, an Evans figures prominently in a Tom Selleck made-for-TV Western, "Crossfire Trail." It is carried by Wilford Brimley as Joe Gill. When someone asks him why he carries the Evans, Joe replies, "Well, it's got 28 bullets, and I ain't a very good shot."

Helical mags have their problems. They mostly work best for shorter rounds like pistol cartridges, but they don't really fit within the form factor for a pistol. So the only modern gun I can think of that uses them is the Calico SMG. They're also a pain to reload because there is no helical equivalent to the stripper clip.